The flavors of childhood

Recently I've had my childhood come back to me in bits and pieces. In the flavors. It started with this milk someone gave me. Fresh raw whole milk. I poured myself a glass for dinner, and when I took a drink all I could do was look at my husband and smile. I was suddenly that little daughter of a dairy farmer sucking fresh warm milk out of the weigh jar (as fresh as it gets without actually squirting yourself in the face).

And then my mom sent me some honey. Not just any honey--fresh, raw honey. And then I pulled a loaf of bread she had made on her last visit out of the freezer. Suddenly I was that little girl sitting at the table in our old house on the farm eating a piece of bread with butter and yummy honey on it.

Yesterday I was drying plums. Growing up, our neighbors across the road had about three plum trees. Those little yummy Italian plums. We ate them fresh and mom dried them and we ate them all winter. Suddenly I was that little girl digging in the freezer for a handful of those dried plums to take outside as a snack on the way to do her chores.

After having all these thoughts come back to me, my husband came in the kitchen and got some of the dried apples out of the little baggie on the counter. He leaned back on the counter and started telling me about when he was little he'd go to his grandparents' house and they always had dried apples in the big deep freezer. It made me smile and gave me that little extra umph to get those apples in the driers like I want to.

I also had two boxes of peaches land on my front step. (I had told my neighbor I wanted a couple boxes and she got us some as a new baby gift--I could have just hugged her!) I canned all those up and my 2-year-old keeps asking for "peach juice."

When they are mamas, I hope they have pleasant flavors from their childhood that make them smile.